Today is Women’s Equality Day in the United States. La dee fucking dah. While others are celebrating “how far we have come”, I find myself in a solemn mood.

Woo hoo, women got the right to vote on this very date back in 1920. Well, wealthy white women got the right to vote on this day back in 1920. It seems we are quick to forget that there was a high poll tax that almost all women of colour and low-class white women were prevented from participating in the voting process. Polling taxes would not be eliminated until 1964 because of the Civil Rights Movement. During this same period, white upper-class women began to reappear to the forefront of women’s rights activism. Focused on issues of top priority for women of a certain amount of wealth, their money gave them the loudest voices, it made them the faces of Women’s Issues. Women of colour and poor women’s issues again falling by the wayside.

Fuck Women’s Equality Day. Until all feminism becomes intersectional then this is merely “Women of a Certain Race and Class Equality Day”.

I have no interest in watching Mad Men while marveling at “how far we have come since then”. The irony is painful.

I have no interest in cheering for more Strong Female Character representation in TV, movies, and literature. It’s smoke and mirrors.

Mere months ago in Texas, women were banned from bringing tampons into senate hearings under the guise that they could be used to throw at politicians. Guns with permit were allowed, of course. These hearings were about limiting access to abortion in Texas. As a result, most abortion clinics in Texas are now shut down.

Middle and upper class women need to stop abandoning their sisters once they have gained their personal level of comfort in their “equality”: there will never be equality unless we begin at the bottom, support the women who have the most struggle and the biggest fight ahead of them in gaining equality.

Middle and upper-class women need to open their ears to women of low or no income. White women need to open their ears to hear that their white lives do not represent the majority of women, that women of colour have a whole other struggle that us white women will never have to deal with.

Women of colour, women with disabilities, queer women, transgender women, women dealing with domestic abuse, etc… these are all groups that need to be addressed in the struggle for true equality.

Women seeking equality must learn how to also be allies to other women with additional marginalizing factors. If you are not willing to be an ally, then you are not seeking equality, you are merely seeking additional privileges.